Sleigh Bells' New Album Was Inspired by the Sexiest Cartoon Character

Alexis Krauss—the frontwoman of the dissonant pop duo Sleigh Bells—whips out her phone to show me a photo of Vikki Dougan, a former pin-up model and actress. During the 1950s, Dougan became infamous for her revolving closet of backless dresses, and is the real-life inspiration behind the cult cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? "This woman was just a total renegade," Krauss says, gesturing towards the photo. Dougan is confidently poised in a swooping black gown; onlookers can't—or won't—disguise their gawking. Krauss laughs. "Look at her!"

Dougan's onscreen avatar certainly made an impression on Krauss and her musical partner, Derek Miller. Their fourth album is named for the vampy animated character, who is at once a suspect, a victim, a renegade, and a fantasy. "I'm not bad," Jessica Rabbit famously drawls, "I'm just drawn that way."

Chatting over coffee and pastries at Brooklyn's Sweetleaf, Krauss tells me that it was within that intersection of ideals and imagination that the New York-based group found a muse for the album, which is as much a shattering of expectations as it is a fresh start. (On that note: It's the first-ever release on the group's label, the aptly-entitled Torn Clean.) "She's a symbol of a greater conversation about goals and ambition and intense desire," Krauss says.

The title was—almost literally—set in stone even before one note of Jessica Rabbit was recorded; Miller came up with it while Sleigh Bells was recording their last album, 2013's Bitter Rivals. "He has this tradition of getting dog tags made for every album with the anticipated release date," Krauss laughs. "Talk about the unattainable, right?"

In the past, Sleigh Bells have recorded music at a feverish rate; their first three albums were released within four years of each other. But with Jessica Rabbit they took their time—three years—as they rethought their dynamic as a band. Considering the Sleigh Bells trajectory, the break was warranted. Krauss, formerly a Teach For America educator and a wedding band singer, only met Miller when they started working on music together. That collaboration resulted in 2010's Treats, a pop album with teeth, crunching guitars, and hooky vocals.

Fans swooned, yet Krauss had hardly flexed her full potential as a vocalist and songwriter. "In the past, our vocal approach was almost a textural one...the vocal was really just an instrument," she says. "A lot of the deliveries on Treats are very deadpan, robotic, almost cheerleader vibe, you know?" Jessica Rabbit, by contrast, finds Krauss pushing the extremes of her voice; she wails in the buoyant "Lighting Turns to Gold," and you can feel how conflicted she sounds in "Loyal For." "I've always kind of approached the band as [being like] myself, but also almost a character," she says. "So when I start writing, I try and occupy a headspace of the instrumental, which is a pretty frantic, crazy headspace. It's the same with our live shows."

Krauss says that a shift, both in terms of vocals and collaboration, began around the Bitter Rivals era. "When Derek and I started the band, we didn't have any prior connections to each other," she says. "We didn't have a circle of friends in common—we just met as strangers who started working on music together. Things happened rather quickly with the band, so there wasn't a trust that existed between us as collaborators and creators. And that trust grew over time."

Part of that trust, too, was one that Krauss needed to establish with herself as a songwriter. "I had stepped out of music for so many years, and I stepped back into it with Sleigh Bells," she explains. "So I kind of had to learn and re-learn that my ideas were good enough."

While the album is certainly not what fans might be expecting (there are even some slowed-down moments, especially on the shimmering "Torn Clean"), Sleigh Bells' live shows still promise to be cathartic affairs. This time, there are just a few more breaths in between the sonic assaults. "We've always been polarizing—that's sort of the space that we exist in," Krauss says. "I'd rather people feel really strong emotions when they think of the band than think of us as kind of forgettable."

Paula MejiaPaula Mejia is a writer, journalist, and the author of a 33 1/3 book on The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy.

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